These two fields would not be used for growing sugar cane in future. They also agreed
that all new contracts for outgrowers will have the regulation that plots must be at least
50 m from the forest and the land between must be kept clear so as not to provide
chimpanzees with cover to cross (O’Hara 2003). This 50 m rule is certainly a move
we rejoice in, even though it remains to be seen whether 50 m is sufficient to deter
chimpanzees from crop-raiding. However, a message has now been sent to sugar out-
growers that the forest border must be avoided and that crop-raiding species must be
identified before action is taken. Indiscriminate killing of anything that moves in the
cane is not permissible, and our education programme continues to stress the value of
chimpanzees and the need to treat them differently from other wildlife.
Tree corridors
A second idea that arose at around the same time was for a tree corridor. This came up
in relation to the problems faced by the Kasokwa chimpanzees, but I include it here
rather than in the chapter on Kasokwa (Chapter 11) because it has wide applicability to
anywhere that chimpanzees are living in forest outliers or fragments or riverine or
gallery forests. This idea has not so far met with any take-up in the Budongo area but it
is important to pursue the possibilities in future.
A tree corridor for chimpanzees was set up by Japanese primatologists in the area of
Bossou, Guinea, in 1998, with a view to enabling chimpanzees to move between two
areas of their habitat that have become separated by agricultural activity: the Nimba
Mountains and the village of Bossou (Hirata et al. 1998). This project is called
the ‘Green Passage Plan’. The distance between the two areas to be joined is 4 km,
and the corridor is 300 m wide. Locally occurring species have been used for the
corridor, all of them found in the chimpanzees’ habitat. Local farmers as well as field
assistants with the Bossou chimpanzee research project have worked to make the
scheme take off, and financial rewards are being paid to farmers to ensure the survival
of their young trees. Time will tell whether this scheme is successful; at present the
trees, which were grown by the project in a special nursery, are still young. This is surely
an excellent initiative^96 and is being watched by others with similar interests in other
parts of Africa.
Fred Babweteera and I had some preliminary discussions with the office of the
Environmental Protection and Economic Development (EPED) in Masindi about this
corridor, and later presented them with a document about it, but to date the matter has
not been taken further. As with the buffer zone, there is something here that is worth
exploring. And, importantly, if a breakthrough could be made here for one small
corridor, it might have implications for the other places in W. Uganda where corridors
are needed to ensure gene flow, and indeed survival, of the animals, for example
between forested areas along the Albertine Rift.
238 The future of Budongo’s chimpanzees
(^96) Funds were received from the Japanese Government for this project.